KATHLEEN AND TOM ELAM CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT MARTIN
RETROFIT TEAM
ARCHITECT: TLM Associates
ROOFING CONTRACTOR: Architectural Paneling LLC, (901) 475-2000
MATERIALS
The Elam center is the home of intercollegiate athletics and the Department of Health and Human Performance on campus. It houses seven basketball courts with volleyball and badminton options, six racquetball courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, interior jogging balcony and aerobics room.
The center’s modified bitumen roof had been leaking since its installation 20 years earlier. It had been topped once with sub-purlins and a metal roof system that contained end laps, which were leaking at various areas and required constant maintenance and resealing. The termination/drip edges of the panels were not installed correctly and allowed capillary-action rainwater to infiltrate the building. In addition, the existing insulation did not meet current code requirements, and the cavity underneath the roof was not properly ventilated.
“Our approach, under the guidance of UT Facilities planning, was to specify complete removal and replacement of the entire metal panel system,” says Mark Maddox, AIA, of TLM Associates. “Metal was chosen due to its long- term durability and life-cycle cost considerations. We specified a continuous panel, approximately 98-feet long, which required job-site rollforming. It also called for accommodations at the ridge and eave for the proper thermal expansion/ contraction of each panel. A special eave/drip edge was extended sufficiently beyond the supporting wall to solve issues along the previous drip edge.”
After removing the existing metal roof system, Architectural Paneling replaced the curbs around all the equipment on the roof. The original parapet walls on three sides of the Elam center required work, so Architectural Paneling removed and reinstalled 434 linear feet of parapet wall coping caps.
The 1/2:12 roof runs in one direction, to the back of the building, where 60 linear feet of headwall flashings had to be replaced. As a last step to preparing the roof for the new panels, 8 inches of unfaced fiberglass insulation was installed between the sub-purlins.
The team erected scaffolding. Then, the rollformer was lifted with a crane to the top where it was bolted to the scaffolding. A crew of 10 to 12 collected the 98-foot-long, 22-gauge Galvalume Plus panels (18-inches wide) as they came off the machine and stacked them on the roof. The crew installed a thermal spacer between the sub-purlins and the 238T roofing panels, which are symmetrical standing-seam panels without male and female seams. Instead, they have matching left and right seams and are joined with a mechanically seamed cap. The panels are non-directional, meaning they can be installed left to right, right to left, or from the center out. Also included with the specification was a Special Total Roofing System warranty with a 20-year no-dollar limit.
EQUIPMENT CURBS MANUFACTURER: LMCurbs
238T ROOFING PANELS MANUFACTURER: McElroy Metal
PHOTO: MCELROY METAL